01-Jul-2015
Welding jig to keep things straight
I made this jig so that when I weld all of the parts of the flares they should stay pretty straight. The jig is made in such a way that both driver and passenger rear plates and both driver and passenger front plates will bolt to the jig. I drilled and tapped mounting holes for each flare plate.
28-Jun-2015
Test fitting the tubes to the plate
I want the flares to be close to the body and not stick out very far so I am using different sized spacers between the tube and plate to get the dimension that I need.
01-Jul-2015
Lining up the tube to the plate
I cut the tubes to the proper size for both rear flares then carefully lined them up and tacked them in place.
I used a piece of 2" tube for the spacer between the 1.25" tubing and the 1/8" flange plate for a flare thickness of 3.5"
03-Jul-2015
Welding on the jig
I welded the spacer tubes in place on the jig so that everything stays nice and straight.
03-Jul-2015
Front flares welded and complete
The front flares will also serve a stiffener for the fenders witch already have a bunch of metal removed from them and have already started to crack.
04-Jul-2015
Tube flares installed
Both sets of flares temporarily installed so that I can finish off the mounting as well as making the pattern for the aluminum skin.
04-Jul-2015
Front flares mounted
The front flares will now aid in making the fenders nice and rigid and prevent further cracking.
04-Jul-2015
Angle of the front flare
Since I was limited in space the angle is slightly less that the rear flares.
04-Jul-2015
Another angle of the rear flare
These flares only stick out 3.5" from the body.
04-Jul-2015
Angle of the tubes
This view shows the angle of the tubes and how the skin will lay on the flares. Going straight is pretty much the standard for tube flares but I wanted to make mine different by making them angle down.
It's going to be a lot more work to make the skin patterns but I think it will be a better design in the long run.
05-Jul-2015
Fitting the flare skin
I made a pattern out of poster board to make my metal out of for the "skin" part of the flare fenders. After fitting it up I transferred the pattern to the aluminum sheet then cut it out with a jig saw.
05-Jul-2015
A lot of fitting
Because of the shape of the flare skins it took a ton of time to fine tune it to fit. I was originally going to use some heavy duty pop rivets but decided to use some stainless steel 10-32 button heads to mount the skin to the flares.